Monthly Archives: August 2015

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Root Chakra and the Sacral Chakra and how understanding them can help you understand your writing better.

This week, I’m writing about the third chakra, or the Power Chakra. Other names for this are the Personal Power Chakra and the Solar Plexus because it’s located in your solar plexus, just under your rib cage, in the center, in the vicinity of your upper abdomen.

As I’ve said in the past, the Writing Through the Body™ process has both generative and corrective benefits.

Remember that before we can approach the process as a generative tool, we have to have at least a vague idea of who we’re dealing with. In this case, let’s say a 15-year-old female.

Next, when we look at the Power Chakra elements, we can first go to the primary fears of this chakra. Starting here gives our character something to grapple with. We might decide to go with the Power Chakra fear that someone will discover her secret(s). This will help us begin to think about what secrets she might have. Maybe she just discovered she’s pregnant. Maybe she’s stealing money from her parents. Maybe she’s dating someone her parents wouldn’t approve of.

Any of these could be cause for stomach problems, a typical ailment associated with the Power Chakra, so we could give her that.

Because she’s withholding, she’s stifling the power of this chakra – her personal power. When we do this, it can draw up anger, so there could likely be an angry outburst in the story.

Over the course of the story, she can either address and transform the problem, or she can continue to keep it to herself. Either way, there’s a story here.

If you already know you have a 15-year-old girl who is stealing from her parents, but you aren’t sure where the story’s going, a brief look at the chakra elements, and you’ll know you’re dealing with a Power Chakra problem. You can then begin to think about the primary strengths of the chakra. Two are generosity and a strong sense of ethics. We at least know she’s not strong on ethics, and although we don’t know what she’s doing with the money, she may or may not be generous.

In considering these aspects of her character, we can begin to ask the all important question: “why?” This question is what drives story. Story is about cause and effect. It’s about decisions that lead to actions that lead to discoveries that lead to more decisions, and on and on…

By consulting the Power Chakra and understanding its elements and getting the character moving around, by making her visible, we can then delve a little deeper into her characterization and her motivations.

This week, let’s take a look at the second chakra, the Sacral Chakra, which is located in the lower abdomen, about three inches below the navel.

If we’re working from a generative position – that is, if we want to write but are uncertain how to get going – the first step is to begin with a character. How about a 40-year-old male?

Next, we can learn about the Sacral Chakra elements and see what resonates with us. For instance, if we look at the negative

image credit:sacramentovocalmusic

manifestations of the Sacral Chakra (one of which is the killing of creativity due to fear), that can give us a place to start. What if the 40-year-old male is a classical composer with a commission deadline coming up, and he’s hit a serious block (killing of creativity due to fear). He’s tried and tried, but he just can’t get the piece finished.

If we then understand the primary fears associated with this chakra (one of which is loss of physical body due to death or illness), we can start to experiment with what the underlying fear might be that’s preventing him from finishing the piece. Maybe he hasn’t been feeling well, and while he’s writing it off as stress from the project, in the far, far back corners of his mind is the fear he’ll die of cancer the way his father did, at a very young age. We can then begin to explore his relationship with his father and see where that takes us.

If we’re working from a corrective position – that is, if we already have a story underway and we’re working with this character and his problem, we can simply begin by learning which chakra corresponds with the character’s particular problem and go from there, the ultimate goal being to take the character through an arc of transformation, which might be ability to take risks, one of the primary strengths of the Sacral Chakra, and/or he’s able to break through the block and create, one of the primary strengths of the Sacral Chakra. And of course, in some situations the character doesn’t make that transformation, but the reader will. The reader will ride the waves of uncertainty and struggle right along with the character, and she’ll be able to see aspects of him he can’t see himself. And in doing this, she’ll be changed, whether he is or not.

image credit:theelegantuniverse.tumblr.com

The beauty of working with the chakras in this way is that there’s always an answer. Any problem we throw at our characters, there’s a road map, of sorts, in the chakra system. Every obstacle we face as humans can be tied back to one of the chakras.